Trump-Russia

Things Happening Fast Open Thread

Mark Noonan51 Comments

Legal Insurrection wonders: who will be the first to cut a deal? Thing is, until just now, there has never been that worry among the Left/Ruling Class. They don’t have to cut deals because they’ve already got them: if you have the right friends, nothing will happen to you no matter what you did wrong…and even in the rare instance where you have to face some jail time, it won’t be much and your friends will see you come out all right on the other end. But, now, we might have some people in power who won’t allow the powerful to skate…and, if so, then eventually, one of the people involved in the attempted coup will spill it.

Related: Democrats start to realize they are facing a debacle in 2020.

Also related: don’t get cocky, kids. Long way to go.

The national debt: it is still a problem. Trump won’t deal with it unless forced to by circumstances, and if he’s re-elected, that might happen. But, basically, no one really wants to deal with it in advance. It is not a problem of immediate concern in Americans’ day to day lives, and the pain of dealing with it would be politically unpopular. But, that which can’t be repaid, won’t be: we’ll have to do something about this, and maybe sooner than we think. OTOH, if Trump really can engineer consistent 3% growth, we might get out of this fairly easy.

Alabama has effectively banned elective abortion. Naturally, the left and the FredoCons are up in arms over this. As we wait for the inevitable lawsuit and injunction, I’d just like to restate my views. Elective abortion is always wrong – it is a grave evil which puts anyone involved at risk of their immortal soul. Outside that, it is also entirely unjust – there is no rational circumstance in which one can justify the deliberate taking of an innocent human life. Even the rape exception is wrong: because dad was a beast doesn’t justify killing the kid. I fully understand the pain that some go through over this – but you can’t fix pain by doing a wrong thing.

Bill DeBlasio, mayor of the increasingly anti-Semitic New York City is blaming Trump for all the Julius Streicher wanna-bees he’s got in his town. This is because he’s a liberal and thus full of sh** (Hat Tip: Ace).

Mitt Romney is doing his best John McCain impression. I hereby un-cast my vote for Romney in 2012.

Is Trump About to Drain the Swamp?

Mark Noonan

This could be the biggest news in politics for the past 50 years:

Attorney General William Barr has reportedly tapped the U.S. attorney for Connecticut to investigate the origins of the Justice Department’s Russia investigation.

John Durham, the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut, will examine the FBI’s decision to open a counterintelligence investigation into the 2016 presidential election and its probe of possible links between the Kremlin’s efforts to interfere in the election and members of President Donald Trump’s campaign team.

Its not just investigating the coup attempt which is important – it is where such an investigation will lead, if the guy in charge of it has no fear and is seeking no favor. And Durham may be that guy – he’s been used by politicians of both parties to look into things and so has a bi-partisan reputation as a good guy and he’s clearly not ambitious – he’s at the tail end of his career and he never seems to have sought top jobs in DC (or, he was denied them because DC didn’t want an honest man). If we have an AG who is willing to let corruption investigations go forward no matter where they lead, then what we might be witnessing is the beginning of the end for our corrupt Ruling Class.

We’ll see what happens – but I’m encouraged.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan38 Comments

Not one Democrat Presidential candidate has condemned the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel. Only two Democrat Senators have condemned the attacks (Rosen D-NV and Sinema D-AZ: and tip of the hat to both of them). The Democrats have made the choice that joining up with Islamists is a better future than defending Jews.

Side note: this conflict goes on until one side wins, and the other loses. The Palestinian leadership – which makes its money off of war and suffering – will not quit until forced to quit. Only the massive application of firepower upon the Palestinians until they all come out, hands in the air, will end this.

Feminists and Conservatives are joining forces against the misbegotten “Equality Act”:

The Equality Act just passed the House Judiciary Committee last week, and it threatens to erase protections for women — protections that benefit women and society as a whole. Legislative and policy “reforms” proposed in this dangerous bill will lead to blatant violations of our safety, privacy, and dignity.

Under this bill, men and boys will take away women’s small business grants and hard-won spots on sports teams; they will be allowed to live in women’s domestic violence shelters and use our locker rooms. And united as women, we are just not going to stand for it.

To illustrate their case, they note the story of a man who identifies as a woman being seen naked in the women’s sauna (by teenaged girls): when the incident was reported the power of the State was brought forth to force everyone to apologize to the guy exposing himself to little girls. It is good that there can be a united fight against pure insanity – but Feminists should think a bit deeper into this. It is the tearing down of societal norms – including the norms which say that certain tasks are for men, others for women – which lead us here. As far as allowing anyone – of any condition – to do whatever their talents allow, no one can have any complaint. But thinking that a woman can be a successful infantryman is just as absurd as thinking a man who identifies as a woman should be allowed to parade around the girls locker room. Men and women are different; they bring in many cases entirely different things to the table; it is the cooperation of the feminine and the masculine, as distinct things, which makes humanity human.

The Daily Caller has a story about how the money (about $100 million) provided to Flint, MI to remediate it’s water issue is being relentlessly misused – the most egregious thing, in my view, is the awarding of high priced contracts to a company with no experience in the work, while more experienced companies were denied contracts. It is a grift: the people who run Flint – ie, the criminally negligent people who created the water crisis – don’t give a damn about the people, and are merely using the bonanza of government dollars to line their own pockets. All of these are Democrats – and all of them will be “re-elected” or, at least, replaced with people who are just like they are. We need to start thinking about what to do – consistent with our federal values – about States and cities which are so badly misgoverned that we can’t rely on sane policy being pursued.

Trump’s counsel has sent a letter to AG Barr ripping the Mueller report pretty hard – on the grounds that Mueller didn’t follow the special counsel rules in writing his final report. I had noted that Mueller would make his report as lurid as he could, and he did. What Democrats are latching on to right now is Mueller’s statement that he couldn’t conclusively prove that Trump didn’t break the law. But Mueller’s job wasn’t to say one way or the other about that – his job was to see if there was a crime, and if there was, then to prosecute it. As he’s not prosecuting Trump or any Trump associate for collusion or obstruction of justice related to the 2016 campaign, Trump has been exonerated. Mueller deliberately muddied that fact.

A pro-baby killing Pennsylvania Democrat is proving himself to be just about as much an a**hole as you’d think.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan38 Comments

The New York Times is worried that the revelation that the Obama Administration spied on Trump will lend credence to Trump’s claim that the Obama Administration spied on him.

The MSM – all at once and all together – decided that Louis Farrakhan is a far right person. It was when Farrakhan got banned by Facebook along with some other people, some of whom were actually of the right. You might recall the time the MSM labelled George Wallace a Republican. So, like that; but, also, different. A very large number of major MSM outfits called Farrakhan far right…almost as if there was a memo that went out and the MSM just transcribed it as news.

A ten month old child died when the raft she was crossing the Rio Grande on tipped over. This is 100% of the fault of American liberals who encourage people to make these dangerous journeys.

1938 video of Civil War veterans.

We’re going to need a bigger Navy. A lot bigger. I think Trump instinctively understands this, but I don’t see any admiral out there ringing the alarm bell and really pushing a naval buildup. We need a Jacky Fisher.

California High School is thinking about removing a picture of George Washington because it is too traumatic for some students. The name of the school? George Washington High School.

Yeah, our government is still spying on you.

President Trump proposes to give the Border Patrol power to decide asylum cases on their own. Makes sense: make a fast judgement on their asylum status. If they’ve got a good case, let them stay…if not, back home they go.

Trump’s magic wand at work again as US Steel gets ready to invest a billion dollars in a new Pittsburgh steel plant.

Liberal Democrat justifies abortion by suggesting if we don’t kill them in the womb, we’ll just have to kill them when they are adults.

Pre-Mueller-Mageddon Open Thread

Mark Noonan39 Comments

Tomorrow is The Day of all Days: the Mueller Report gets released. Whole thing is a waste of time, of course, but that won’t stop Democrats. If they are at a loss, they’ll just bald-faced lie and make up stuff about it. I think, though, that the pivot they’ll revolve around is whatever is redacted – they’ll assure their suckers viewers that in those areas is the proof that Trump is a Russian stooge. What I’m hoping for is that as we ring down the curtain on Mueller, Barr starts to raise the curtain on a general investigation into government corruption.

Robert O’Rourke (D-Never Be Caught Dead in Texas Again After This) says that he doesn’t give to charity because he gives himself to us. Seriously: I’m not kidding. That’s what he’s asserting. And the Democrats claim that Trump is a narcissist.

Jazz Shaw has an interesting bit on the UAW’s continuing efforts to unionize the VW plant in Chattanooga. It’ll probably fall flat: but, I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t time for us on the right to become Unionists? What I mean is that there is a real need for worker unions – trouble is, the worker unions we have these days mostly represent government employees and are the merest tools of the Democrat party. But suppose we started up a union which represents only private sector employees and remains strictly non-partisan while pushing for various worker protections? Think about it: we’re all starting to feel a grip of fear that one unguarded comment on social media could get us fired; might be nice to have union protection against that. So, too, might the cubicle workers (mostly customer service of various types) like some protections against stupidly absurd work schedules (serious, guys: I know whereof I speak…some times they have these poor people working mornings one day, evenings the next and then take their two days off and split them up)? Might also be nice to have unions which work against government regulations which are designed to restrain trade. We should ponder this.

RSM wonders if Soros is funding Democrat anti-Semitism.

Trump son-in-law Kushner is apparently working on a Middle East peace deal to be unveiled later this year – naturally, the Palestinian leadership is opposed before the plan it is even presented. What people won’t admit – because they are cowards – is that the PA is a mafia-like organization and if they made peace, there’d be no place for the current mafia bosses. It doesn’t matter that the Palestinians suffer under poverty and corruption. It certainly doesn’t matter that a few Israelis are killed by the guys in Gaza (matters even less that Palestinians are killed in response). All that matters is that the mafia bosses continue to live well and siphon off foreign aid money to their Swiss bank accounts. Until people confront this fact and kill the Palestinian leaders, there will be no peace.

Gotta love the Poles – they propose to name a new, American military base in Poland, “Fort Trump”. Of all the Europeans, the Poles are about the only ones worth an American’s attention…though the Czech’s and the Balt’s are ok.

I Think I Was Bit by a Spider Open Thread

Mark Noonan23 Comments

So, I sit down to dinner on Wednesday night and just as a I start eating, I feel a pain in my stomach. Couldn’t be the food, I was literally on my first bite when I started to feel it. After a couple hours, the pain becomes agonizing, but not constant. It is a series of very painful spasms in my abdomen. Naturally, being a guy, I pretend it isn’t a problem. But, all night long I’m unable to sleep because the spasms keep coming. By morning, I’m exhausted. The spasms have lessened in intensity, but now I feel nausea and I’m chilled to the bone, even on a warm Nevada day. But as the pain is less, I still pretend its nothing. I took a couple Tylenol before bed on Thursday night and I slept pretty well, but still woke up tired. Hardly any pain left but still just generally weak. At last, I start thinking that something might be up and perhaps it is related to that nasty red spot on my arm which is now itching like the Dickens. A quick look at photos and various bug bite descriptions and I narrow it down to either a black widow or hobo spider. As it turns out, I should have seen a doctor right away. I’ll keep an eye on it – but the swelling in the bite area does seem to be going down.

Abortion Barbie may seek a Congressional seat.

AOC (D-Marxist Study Group in the Village or some such)did the Hillary thing (“I ain’t in no ways tard”) while speaking to a largely African-American audience. There are many obvious marks of the Left, and one of the most prominent is complete contempt for their own supporters.

Some polls (FWIW) show that the public is starting to believe there was Collusion…but between Hillary and Russia. As there was (or, at least, Collusion between Team Clinton and foreign intelligence services), this is good news.

Looks like Mueller might have just made stuff up in his attempt to get Trump. This surprises none of us.

Rep. Eric “Nuke ‘Em” Swalwell (D-People’s Republic of North Mexico) is going to run for President. Shortly, it’ll be easier to list the Democrats who aren’t running.

Weaponized Pouncing and Seizing Open Thread

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Hey, Liberals, can we talk for a sec? There’s something you ought to know: Trump is the morally superior guy here.

Now, don’t get me wrong: he’s not exactly a candidate for sainthood – he’s done some things in his life as he shouldn’t. But your fundamental problem, all along, as been assuming he’s as garbage as the people you look up to. All those Hollywood types, career politicians, permanent activists…nearly all of them are pure filth. I know you just assumed that Trump was like that, but you should never assume. And, as it turns out, at least in legal matters, he’s clean as a whistle.

Now that’s out of the way…

This was as if we got to watch Hillary lose. Twice. In one day. When the Avenatti news broke, I was at my desk at work and had a very hard time suppressing gales of laughter. This guy, remember, was part of the smearing of Trump and the smearing of Kavanaugh. He was being talked up last year, by a lot of people, as a 2020 candidate. He preened himself as some sort of Tribune of Decency…well, creepy porn lawyer is now creepy extortionist. Is there a better symbol of our corrupt Ruling Class than this clown? A man so morally decrepit that the porn star he used to represent won’t have anything to do with him any longer. And let’s all face some facts – all of us would have Stormy over for dinner long before we’d let Avenatti cross our threshold. We have standards, you know?

President Trump and Team are taking some victory laps – and it is glorious to behold. Think about it: for two years not just Trump, but everyone associated with him has essentially been accused of being traitors. Now, they are vindicated – and they aren’t letting bygones be bygones. One of the best things was a letter from Trump’s re-election campaign to TV producers pointing out that they shouldn’t have back on the clowns who all accused the President of treason.

Meanwhile, some people are starting to look into whether or not Hillary colluded with a foreign government. This is as good a place as any to start. This was a coup attempt, make no mistake about it. Various elements of government and media decided to annul the free and fair election of 2016. Lots of people should wind up in jail over this. But, we’ll see where that goes. I hope it happens – Trump can do no better service to our nation than taking these people down.

Mueller Time Open Thread

Mark Noonan39 Comments

The long-awaited report dropped today – which I think rather odd as this could have been wound up six months ago, or six months from now. I suspect the timing has to do with our new Attorney General, who seems to bear no feelings of loyalty to Mueller. Be that as it may, no one outside of high, official circles knows what is in it…but in keeping with Team Mueller, leaks abound. Apparently, there are no more indictments coming down. And, so, we’ve finished with Mueller and no one (other than an alleged Russian bot-farm) has been indicted for things relating to the 2016 campaign. We’re done here – not that liberals will take it that way.

Looking around Twitter, I had a ball – liberals in tears or trying to buck themselves up with ever more bizarre theories about how all of this will still work out to Trump being arrested any day, now. As I noted – and so did a lot of other people, including our Matt – this is just like Election Night, 2016, all over again.

The Democrats will keep this going, because their base is going to insist – but the longer they go, the more I suspect it’ll backfire on them. Unless absolute, rock solid proof of Trump illegality comes up, the people outside Democrat fever swamps will grow increasingly impatient and sympathetic to Trump.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan58 Comments

I don’t think the Democrats realize that if they really go for impeachment, we’re not going to lie down for it. We already know they’ve got nothing on Trump – Mueller would have found it a year ago, if it existed – so we also know that any move to impeach him would be a purely partisan political act. And act of hatred and disdain – not just for President Trump, but for all of us who support him. I do hope that cooler heads prevail – trouble is, the cooler heads in the Democrat Party are Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

Get ready for a wild ride into 2020 where literally everything may happen.

Related: Richard Fernandez takes a very intelligent look at how civil war might be. He’s wrong, in my view: if we descend into civil war, it will be extremely violent very fast. Once the lid is removed, 60 years of hatred will emerge and start butchering everyone on the other side it can get its hands on. People, especially on the right, will be looking for payback. That’s why I think a putative Civil War II in the United States would be very much like the Spanish Civil War.

The new Attorney General will not recuse himself from the Mueller investigation. Good. But, also, a bit moot at this point – the Democrats are fleeing from Mueller as fast as they can and have latched on to “obstruction” as the thing to go after Trump on…it is nice and nebulous and you can spin it any way you like.

Hillary says she’ll be the only Democrat not running for President in 2020. We’ll see – but if she does want to change her mind, she’ll have to do it in the next 30 days.

Rep. Ilhan Omar is an anti-Semite. Democrats are in a pickle trying to dance around that fact. They’ve already made the calculation that there’s more money and votes in America’s growing Muslim community than in America’s shrinking Jewish community, so they will not – cannot – actually smack her down. OTOH, the charge of anti-Semitism is starting to hurt the Democrats and they want to make it go away. It won’t, though: if you lie down with dogs, you come up with fleas.

Breakfast Club Evita – our own Socialist AOC – might be in a bit of legal jeopardy over how she managed campaign funds in 2018. A lot of funds; and they seem to have been moved around in odd ways almost as if she were trying to hide where the money was going.

End Stage Trump-Russia

Mark Noonan19 Comments

So, we had Cohen at the House today – where someone convicted of lying to Congress got to testify…which just shows how stupid this whole thing has become. I was working a bit of over time today, and so missed the hearings. When I got home to check on how it went, this stood out:

Cohen testified that he went over “topics” that Democrats would raise at today’s hearing with lead anti-Trump attack dog, Adam Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the House intelligence committee. So the substance of his testimony was coordinated with the Democratic leadership.

And that is that – he’s coordinating with the people supposedly just trying to elicit the facts of the case. That isn’t fact-finding and oversight: that is prosecution. But the House doesn’t prosecute – not even in impeachment; the House just gathers facts and, depending, refers them to trial before the Senate or to Justice for prosecution. The fact that Cohen was getting coached from the Democrat side of the aisle means that all he was doing was feeding the partisan, Democrat Narrative. Not a word of what he said can be trusted, even if he hadn’t previously lied to Congress.

I have noticed – and so have plenty of others – that the Trump-Russia thing is rapidly morphing into “Trump violated campaign finance laws by paying off women”. Lawyers would have to really decide, before a judge, if such payments were campaign finance violations. But even if they are, such things are invariably handled by fines. Personally, I don’t see them as such – even if Trump dipped into actually donated money to pay the ladies off. From what I can gather, Trump has had a lot of women shake him down for money post-interaction. What isn’t completely certain is whether he had sex with any of these claimants. Such things are difficult to prove unless there’s a third witness or forensic evidence (like a blue dress, ya dig?). Normally, people aren’t having sex a trois; so, its “he said/she said”. But if you’re a billionaire, maybe you just make the calculation that its better to pay for it to go away than to fuss about a sordid scandal in public? The ultimate outcome of the Stormy Saga indicates that Trump may be the put-upon person in all this (though it is enormously funny, still, that Stormy will be the first prostitute to ever pay a politician). If a lot of ladies, justifiably or not, were coming out of the woodwork demanding cash for silence in 2016, then in my view that would be a campaign expenditure…after all, Trump has never hid his social life; none of us were shocked to find out he might have had a dalliance with a lady of interesting background. He wasn’t paying to hide; he was paying to get rid of so he could get on with the campaign. So, campaign expenditure. Of an odd sort, to be sure; but, still.

I don’t know the Democrats’ end game here. Clearly, the large majority of the Democrat base wants Trump impeached. They are convinced that he colluded with Russia to switch votes from Hillary to himself in 2016. So, too, do a large number of Democrat House members want him impeached. Its not a matter in the House of “can they get to 2018?”. If Nancy holds a vote, I can’t see any Democrats voting against. The only question at that point would be if any GOPers would vote along with them. But I don’t see Nancy wanting to hold a vote – such an action is fraught with peril for the Democrats. I think that Nancy would only go along with it if she were assured that at least 5 Republicans in the Senate would vote to convict (this wouldn’t be enough to remove: but it would be enough to say that a bipartisan Senate majority voted to convict, and that would be enough for political purposes). If they impeach via a party-line vote and then Trump is acquitted in the Senate, that would be a disaster for the Democrats heading in to 2020. Trump would be vindicated – and the Democrats very publicly exposed as mean-spirited, hyper-partisans. OTOH, Nancy might be forced to it: the base gets more extreme every day. They might start talking up primary challenges in 2020 for House members who don’t vote to impeach.

Do keep in mind that there is a part of the GOP – rapidly shrinking but still there – which would love to go along with the Democrats in getting rid of Trump. Flake and McCain are gone…but Romney is there along with Murkowski. Cocaine Mitch, though, can probably keep his caucus in line: remember, if the House impeaches, there has to be a trial in the Senate. It isn’t up for debate: the Chief Justice comes over to preside and the Democrats make their case, then the Senate votes. And if it comes to that, absent some really solid evidence against Trump, I think McConnell will be able keep the GOP majority in line…and even a Murkowski would tread carefully, knowing that a vote to convict would make her toxic with GOP voters unless there was clear evidence of criminal behavior to justify the vote.

And so we go on with our insane times – the most law-abiding President we’ve had in ages being dragged by people who probably violate federal laws a dozen times a week…and all of it being done in service to a stupid theory cooked up by Team Hillary to explain away their loss. Just incredible.